The Port State Control (PSC) programme has been established to implement international maritime safety and security conventions since 1982. The port States which are members of the PSC programme conduct on-board inspections on foreign ships calling at their ports in order to prevent shipping accidents from occurring in their water. However, one of the difficulties of conducting on-board inspections is that a large number of ships call at a port at any one time, and under this situation port State cannot inspect every ship calling at its port due to the limitation of resource. Further on-board inspections could delay fast turnover rate that characterizes a good logistics system. This study helps port States make use of vessels' historical safety records to identify potential substandard ships before conducting inspections and determine appropriate port inspection rates. Thus this research contributes to the existing maritime safety policy and risk management in four aspects. First, this study addresses the effectiveness of the PSC programme and assesses the methods of selecting ships for inspection. Data on ship total loss (annually, from 1973-2006) and on the PSC inspection records (annually, from 1994-2005) were collected and analysed. The results reveal that the programmes are effective to improve the safety level of maritime transport and the methods are effective but the efficiency and stability of these methods should be improved. Secondly, two propositions are proposed to construct a risk indicator system, based on the theory of managerial function and the theory of predictive index in organizational behavior, which are (i) strengthening responsibilities of the actors within the maritime safety net; and (ii) abstracting characteristics form shipping accidents investigation. The new risk indicator system guided by the two propositions provides a basis for constructing a unified information collection database. Thirdly, a new method of determining risk level of a ship is proposed based on the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model. By comparing with the weighted-sum model used by the Tokyo MOU, it is proven that the TOPSIS model can improve the efficiency of identifying substandard ships under the existing Tokyo MOU information collection database. Finally, for the first time, a tool, based on Stackelberg game, is proposed to decide an optimal port inspection rate. It is proven that by the proposed tool, at the equilibrium of the game, there are an optimal port inspection rate and an optimal shipowner's effort level. The result indicates that port States may not benefit from over-frequent inspection. In summary, the whole research provides the basis for forming an integrated selecting-ships-for-inspection system. The effectiveness of the PSC programme provides the basis for its further development. Two propositions are the basis for constructing a risk indicator system. The TOPSIS model is to improve the efficiency of targeting substandard ships and a tool, based on Stackelberg game, is to determine the optimal port inspection rate.